The Twilight Watch (6 page)

Las looked a bit put out by that. I was getting depressed too,
trying to play the idiot.

'Can you read my thoughts?' he asked.

'Not right now,' I confessed.

'I don't think we ought to invent any extra dimensions of reality,'
Las explained. 'We've already known for a long time what man is
capable of. If people could read thoughts, levitate and do all that
other nonsense, there'd be some proof.'

'If someone suddenly acquired abilities like that, they'd hide
them from everybody else,' I said, and took a look at Las through
the Twilight. 'A really different, Other kind of being would provoke
the envy and fear of people around him.'

Las didn't betray the slightest sign of excitement. Just scepticism.

'Well, surely this miracle worker would want to give the woman
he loves and his children the same kind of abilities? They'd gradually
take over from us as a biological species.'

'But what if the special abilities couldn't be inherited?' I asked.
'Or they weren't necessarily inherited? And you couldn't transmit
them to anyone else either? Then you'd have the normal people
and these Others existing independently. And if there weren't
many of the Others, then they'd hide their abilities from everybody
else . . .'

'Seems to me like you're talking about a random mutation that
produces extrasensory abilities,' Las said, thinking out loud. 'Only
if that mutation is random and recessive, it's absolutely no use to
us. But you can actually have titanium bones installed right now!'

'Not a good idea,' I muttered.

We both had a drink.

'You know, this is a pretty weird situation we're in here,' Las
mused. 'A huge empty building, hundreds of apartments – and
only nine people living in them . . . that's if we include you. The
things you could get up to. It takes your breath away. And what
a video you could shoot! Just imagine it – the luxurious interiors,
empty restaurants, dead laundries, rusting exercise machines and
cold saunas, empty swimming pools and casino tables wrapped in
plastic sheeting. And a young girl wandering through it all.
Wandering around and singing. It doesn't even matter what.'

'Do you shoot videos?' I asked cautiously.

'Nah . . .' Las frowned. 'Well . . . just the once I helped this
punk band I know shoot one. They showed it on MTV, but then
it was banned.'

'What was so terrible about it?'

'Nothing really,' said Las. 'It was just a song, nothing offensive
about it, in fact it was about love. The visuals were unusual. We
shot them in a hospital for patients with motor function disorders.
We set up strobe lights in a hall, put on the song "Captain,
captain, why have you left the horse?" and invited the patients to
dance. So they danced to the strobes. Or they tried to. And then
we laid the new sound sequence over the visuals. The result was
really stylish. But you really can't show it. It has a bad feel somehow.'

I imagined the visuals and squirmed.

'I'm no good as a video producer,' Las admitted. 'Or as a musician
. . . they played a song of mine on the radio once, in the
middle of the night, in a programme for all sorts of hardcore
weirdos. And what do you think happened? This well-known
songwriter immediately called the radio station and said all his life
in his songs he'd been teaching people about good, and about
eternal values, but this had cancelled out his entire life's work . . .
You heard one of my songs, I think – did you think it was encouraging
people to do bad things?'

'I think it made fun of bad attitudes,' I said.

'Thank you,' Las said sadly. 'But that's exactly the problem –
there are too many people who won't understand that. They'll
think it's all for real.'

'That's what the fools will think,' I said, trying to console the
unacknowledged bard.

'But there are more of them,' Las exclaimed. 'And they haven't
perfected head replacements yet . . .'

He reached for the bottle, poured the vodka and said:

'You drop in any time you need to, don't be shy. And later I'll
get you a key for an apartment on the fifteenth floor. It's empty,
but it has toilets.'

'Won't the owner object?' I asked with a laugh.

'It's all the same to him now. And his heirs can't agree on how
to share out the space.'

I
GOT BACK
to my place at four in the morning. Slightly drunk, but
remarkably relaxed. After all, you don't often come across people who
are so different. Working in the Watch encourages you to be too
categorical. This guy doesn't smoke or drink, he's a good boy. This
one swears like a trooper, he's a bad boy. And there's nothing to be
done about it, those are precisely the ones we're most interested in
– the good ones as our support, the bad ones as potential Dark Ones.

But somehow we tend to forget that there are all different sorts
of people . . .

The singer with the bass guitar didn't know anything about
Others. I was sure of that. If only I could have sat up half the
night with every one of Assol's inhabitants, then I could have
formed an accurate opinion of all of them.

But I wasn't entertaining any such illusions. Not everybody will
ask you to come in, not everybody will start talking to you about
obscure, abstract subjects. And then, apart from the ten or so residents,
there were hundreds of service personnel – security guards,
plumbers, labourers, bookkeepers. There was no way I could possibly
check all of them in a reasonable amount of time.

I managed to get washed in the shower – I'd discovered a strange
sort of hose that I could get a jet of water out of – and then
walked out into my one and only room. I needed to get some
sleep . . . and the next morning I'd try to come up with a new
plan.

'Hi, Anton,' a voice said from the open window.

I recognised it. And immediately felt sick at heart.

'Good morning, Kostya,' I said. The words of greeting sounded
inappropriate somehow. But not to greet the vampire at all would
have been even more stupid.

'Can I come in?' Kostya asked.

I walked over to the window. Kostya was sitting on the outside
sill with his back to me, dangling his legs. He was completely naked.
As if to demonstrate straight away that he hadn't climbed up the
wall, but had flown to the window in the form of a gigantic bat.

A Higher Vampire. At not much more than twenty years old.

A talented boy . . .

'I think not,' I said.

Kostya nodded and didn't try to argue:

'As I understand it, we're working on the same job?'

'Yes.'

'That's good.' He turned round and flashed his teeth in a gleaming
white smile. 'I like the idea of working with you. But are you
really afraid of me?'

'No.'

'I've learned a lot,' Kostya boasted. Just like when he was a kid
and he used to declare: 'I'm a terrible vampire! I'm going to learn
how to turn into a bat! I'm going to learn how to fly!'

'You haven't learned anything,' I corrected him. 'You've stolen
a lot.'

Kostya frowned:

'Words. The usual Light word game. Your people allowed me
to take it, so I did. What's the problem?'

'Are we just going to carry on sparring like this?' I asked. And
I raised my hand, folding the fingers into the sign of Aton, the
negation of non-life. For a long time I'd wanted to find out if the
ancient North African spells worked on modern Russian creatures
of the Dark.

Kostya glanced warily at the incomplete sign. Either he knew
what it was, or he'd caught a whiff of power. He asked:

'Are you allowed to breach your disguise?'

I lowered my hand in annoyance.

'No. But I might just risk it.'

'No need. If you say so, I'll leave. But right now we're doing
the same job . . . we have to talk.'

'So talk,' I said, dragging a stool over to the window.

'You won't let me in then?'

'I don't want to be all alone in the middle of the night with a
naked man,' I laughed. 'Who knows what people might think?
Let's hear it.'

'What do you make of the T-shirt collector?'

I looked at Kostya quizzically.

'The guy on the tenth floor. He collects funny T-shirts.'

'He doesn't know anything,' I said.

Kostya nodded:

'That's what I think too. Eight of the apartments here are occupied.
The owners of another six show up from time to time, but
all the rest are very rarely here. I've already checked out all the
permanent residents.'

'And?'

'Nothing. They don't know anything about us.'

I didn't ask how Kostya could be so sure. After all, he was a
Higher Vampire. They can enter another person's mind as easily
as an experienced magician.

'I'll deal with the other six in the morning,' said Kostya. 'But
I'm not hopeful.'

'And do you have any suggestions?' I asked.

Kostya shrugged:

'Anyone living here has enough money and influence to interest
a vampire or a werewolf. A weak, hungry one . . . newly initiated.
So the list of suspects is pretty long.'

'How many newly initiated lower Dark Ones are there in
Moscow?' I asked. I was amazed at how easily the phrase 'lower
Dark Ones' slipped off my tongue.

I never used to call them that.

I used to feel sorry for them.

Kostya reacted calmly to the phrase. He really was a Higher
Vampire. In control, confident.

'Not many,' he said evasively. 'They're being checked, don't worry.
Everybody's being checked. All the lower Others, and even the
magicians.'

'Is Zabulon really concerned?' I asked.

'Well, Gesar isn't exactly a model of composure,' Kostya
responded. 'Everyone's concerned. You're the only one taking the
situation so lightly.'

'I don't see it as a great disaster,' I said. 'There are human
beings who know we exist. Not many, but there are some. One more person doesn't
change the situation. If he makes a sensation out of this, we'll soon locate
him and make him look like some kind of psycho. That sort of thing has already
. . .'

'And what if he becomes an Other?' Kostya asked curtly.

'Then there'll be one more Other,' I said and shrugged.

'What if he doesn't become a vampire or a werewolf, but a
genuine Other?' Kostya bared his teeth in a smile. 'A genuine
Other? Light or Dark . . . that doesn't matter.'

'Then there'll be one more magician,' I said.

Kostya shook his head:

'Listen, Anton, I'm quite fond of you. Even now. But sometimes
I'm amazed at how naïve you are.'

Kostya stretched – his arms rapidly sprouting a covering of short
fur, his skin turning dark and coarse.

'You deal with the staff,' he said in a shrill, piercing voice. 'If
you get wind of anything, call me.'

He turned to me, his face distorted by the transformation, and
smiled again:

'You know, Anton, a naïve Light One like you is the only kind
a Dark One could ever really be friends with.'

He jumped down, flapping his leathery wings ponderously. The
huge bat flew off into the night, a little awkwardly, but quickly enough.

There was a small rectangle of cardboard lying on the outside
sill – a business card. I picked it up and read it:

'Konstantin. Research assistant, the Scientific Research Institute
for Haemotological Problems.'

And then the phone numbers – work, home, mobile. I actually
remembered the home number – Kostya was still living with his
parents. Most vampires tend to have pretty strong family ties.

What had he been trying to tell me?

Why all the panic?

I switched on the light, lay down on the mattress and looked
at the pale grey rectangles of the windows.

'If he becomes a genuine Other . . .'

How did Others appear in the world? No one knew. 'A random
mutation', Las had called it – a perfectly adequate term. You were
born a human being, you lived an ordinary life . . . until one of
the Others sensed your ability to enter the Twilight and pump
power out of it. After that you were 'guided'. Lovingly, carefully
coaxed into the required spiritual condition, so that in a moment
of powerful emotional agitation you would look at your shadow,
and see it in a different way. See it lying there like a black rag,
like a curtain you could pull up over yourself and then draw aside
to enter another world.

The world of the Others.

The Twilight.

And the state you were in when you first found yourself in the
Twilight – joyful and benign or miserable and angry – determined
who you would be. What kind of power you would go on to
draw from the Twilight . . . the Twilight that drinks power from
ordinary people.

'If he becomes a genuine Other . . .'

There was always the possibility of coercive initiation. But only
through the loss of true life and transformation into a walking
corpse. A human being could become a vampire or a werewolf,
and he would be forced to maintain his existence by taking the
lives of human beings. So there was a route for the Dark Ones
. . . but one that even they weren't particularly fond of.

Only what if it really was possible to become a magician?

What if there was a way for any human being to be transformed
into an Other? To acquire long – very long – life and
exceptional abilities. There was no doubt many people would want
to do it.

And we wouldn't be against it either. There were so many fine
people living in the world who were worthy of being Light Others.

Only the Dark Ones would start building up their ranks too . . .

Suddenly it struck me. It was no disaster that someone had
revealed our secrets to a human being. It was no disaster that information
could leak out. It was no disaster that the traitor knew the
address of the Inquisition.

But this was a new twist in the spiral of endless war.

For centuries the Light Ones and Dark Ones had been shackled
by the Treaty. We had the right to search for Others among human
beings, even the right to nudge them in the right direction. But
we were obliged to sift through tons of sand in our search for
grains of gold. The balance was maintained.

Then suddenly here was a chance to transform thousands,
millions of people into Others!

A football team wins the Cup Final – and a wave of magic
surges across tens of thousands of exultant people, transforming
them into Light Others.

And at the same moment the Day Watch issues a command to
the fans of the team that has lost – and they're transformed into
Dark Others.

That was what Kostya had had in mind. The immense temptation
to shift the balance of power in your own favour at a single
stroke. Of course, the consequences would be clear, both to the Dark
Ones and us Light Ones. Of course, the two sides would adopt new
amendments to the Treaty and restrict the initiation of human beings
within acceptable limits. After all, the USA and the USSR had
managed to keep their nuclear arms race within bounds . . .

I closed my eyes and shook my head. Semyon had once told
me that the arms race was halted by the creation of the ultimate
weapon. Two thermonuclear devices – that was all that was required
– each of which could trigger a self-sustaining reaction of nuclear
fusion. The American one was installed somewhere in Texas, the
Russian one in Siberia. It was enough to explode either one of
them – and the entire planet would be transformed into a ball of
flame.

Only, of course, that state of affairs didn't suit us, so the weapon
that was never meant to be used could never be activated. But
the presidents didn't need to know that, they were only human
beings . . .

Maybe the leaders of the Watches had 'magical bombs' like that?
And that was why the Inquisition, which was in on the secret,
policed the observation of the Treaty so fervently?

Maybe.

But even so it would be better if it was impossible to initiate
ordinary people . . .

Even in my drowsy state I winced at the implications. What
did this mean, that I'd begun to think like a fully fledged Other?
There are Others, and there are human beings – and they're
second class. They can never enter the Twilight, they're not going
to live more than a hundred years. And there's nothing you can
do about it . . .

Yes, that was exactly the way I'd started to think. Finding a
good human being with the natural aptitudes of an Other and
bringing him or her over to your side – that was a joy. But turning
everyone
into Others was puerile nonsense, a dangerous and irresponsible
delusion.

Now I had something to feel proud about. It had taken me less
than ten years to finally stop being human.

My morning began in contemplation of the mysteries of the shower
cubicle. Reason finally conquered soulless metal and I got a shower
– with music playing, no less – and then concocted a breakfast
out of crispbreads, salami and yoghurt. Feeling cheered by the
sunshine, I settled down on the windowsill and ate with a view
of the Moscow river. For some reason I recalled Kostya admitting
that vampires can't look at the sun. Sunlight doesn't actually burn
them, it just gives them an unpleasant sensation.

But I had no time for melancholy reflection on old acquaintances.
I had to search for . . . for whom? The renegade Other? I
was hardly in the best position to do that. His human client? A
long, dreary business.

All right, I decided. Let's proceed according to the strict laws
of the classic detective novel. What do we have? A clue. The
letter sent from Assol. What does it give us? It doesn't give us
anything. Unless perhaps someone saw the letter being posted
three days ago. There's not much chance that they'd remember,
of course . . .

What a fool I was! I even slapped myself on the forehead. Sure,
it's no disgrace for an Other to forget about modern technology,
Others aren't very fond of complicated technical gizmos. But I
was a computer hardware specialist.

All the grounds of Assol were monitored by video cameras.

I put my suit on, knotted my tie and splashed on the eau de
cologne that Ignat had chosen for me the day before. Dropped
my phone into my inside pocket . . . 'Only dumb kids and sales
assistants carry their mobiles on their belts' – that was one of
Gesar's helpful little comments.